JigTalk is a dating app that makes you chat if you want to see your match’s photos

Endlessly swiping your way through Tinder has lost its appeal for lots of people, which is why JigTalk is hoping that its dating app for Android and iOS will succeed in making online dating a little more personal.

The premise is simple: sign up with an email address, or connect your Facebook account, and you’ll be presented with a choice between two people. Pick your favourite from the two and you’ll be presented with another nearby match based on your search criteria. Or that’s the theory, in our testing in London (UK), there’s virtually no one using the app, and thus no matches to pick between.

Putting that aside for a moment, and imaging there were users, when you do get a match, the photo of the other person is covered in 16 jigsaw pieces and four ice-breaker questions are delivered by the app to get things moving. As you chat, a piece of the jigsaw is removed with each response, thereby putting the emphasis on having a conversation rather than just looking at a photo, swiping and moving along.

You can control a few basic aspects of your search criteria, like age range, whether you want to chat with men, women or both, and how large a geographical range you want to get matches from – the maximum is 150 miles. Even selecting from 21 – the maximum age, and the maximum range yielded no matches with women using the app. Switching across to ‘both’ did yield men using the app in London though.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that JigTalk hasn’t amassed a user base in London yet – it focused on Manchester for its launch but is now looking to expand to the capital, having raised £130,000 to fund a city-by-city expansion.

For now, that means straight guys hoping to chat with women in London are probably going to be out of luck, which is a shame as it’s an interesting enough spin on app dating to be worth checking out. Women and gay/bi guys will likely have a better experience.

The company’s challenge is now ensuring that it manages to attract new users quickly enough to keep people interested.

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